“You see things; and you say ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say ‘Why not?’” ~ George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950), Back to Methuselah, act I, Selected Plays with Prefaces, vol. 2, p. 7 (1949). The serpent says these words to Eve.Senator Robert F. Kennedy used a similar quotation as a theme of his 1968 campaign for the presidential nomination: “Some men see things as they are and say, why; I dream things that never were and say, why not.” ~ Senator Edward M. Kennedy quoted these words of Robert Kennedy’s in his eulogy for his brother in 1968.—The New York Times, June 9, 1968, p. 56.

The Supreme Court on Monday sidestepped two major cases concerning partisan gerrymandering, allowing controversial district maps to stand and be used in this fall’s midterm elections.

The 9-0 ruling authored by Chief Justice John Roberts in a Wisconsin case is a blow to Democrats who argued the Republican-drawn maps prevented fair and effective representation by diluting voters’ influence and penalizing voters based on their political beliefs.

While the ruling will let the maps be used, the justices dodged the question of whether they are legal. The Supreme Court has a standard limiting the over-reliance on race in map-drawing, except under the most limited circumstances. The court has not been successful in developing a test concerning the over-reliance on politics.

While the liberals on the court agreed with the decision to send the Wisconsin case back down to the lower court, they emphasized that the court should some day take up such cases. “Partisan gerrymandering no doubt burdens individual votes, but it also causes other harms,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote.

She called partisan gerrymandering “incompatible with democratic principles.”

There is a separate and similar challenge in the pipeline coming out of North Carolina and could decide soon whether or not to hear that case.

… What we saw last week embodied the spirit of capitulation that has allowed a once-great party to move toward the extremism and irrationality represented by President Trump. As recently as 2007, a significant share of the GOP, led by President George W. Bush himself, sought a humane answer to the problem of illegal immigration.

Now, the party of family values is caught up in the forcible separation of children from their parents. Members of the GOP, including House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) , try to rationalize the spectacle of kids torn away from their moms and dads at the border by blaming court decisions or (in Trump’s case) Democrats.

Thus do Republicans compound their inhumanity with a lie. The only reason this is happening is because of Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s decision to incarcerate those who enter the country illegally and to take their young children away on the that’ll-teach-’em theory.

Sessions has spoken of this thuggishness with pride. He is, you see, creating a new incentive. “If you don’t want your child separated,” he said last month, “then don’t bring them across the border illegally.” This is cruelty by design. …

… Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.) organized what is known as a discharge petition to force votes on a series of immigration bills. One of them was a clean effort to give the dreamers a path to citizenship that was favored to pass if it got a vote.

Every one of the 193 Democrats in the House signed the petition, and so did 23 Republicans. It needed only two more GOP signatures to force action.

And on the cusp of victory, the so-called moderates caved in to Ryan. The last two endorsements would never come. …

…Their retreat means that Ryan can bring two bills to the floor this week, a hard-line proposal from Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) likely to fail, and a policy mishmash that would achieve many of Trump’s goals — although Trump briefly embarrassed Ryan on Friday by saying he’d veto the so-called compromise before he reversed himself later that afternoon.

While offering a less generous approach to the dreamers’ problem, that second bill would also provide billions for Trump’s “beautiful wall,” a series of new restrictions on legal immigration and tougher rules for asylum seekers.

Its “solution” to the family separation debacle would be to end court-mandated legal protections for children brought across the border so entire families could be jailed together. Now there’s humanity for you.

The moderates claim they could still fall back on their discharge petition strategy. But having flinched once, there’s little reason to believe they won’t balk again. …

Eddie Devine voted for President Donald Trump because he thought he would be good for American business. Now, he says, the Trump administration’s restrictions on seasonal foreign labor may put him out of business. “I feel like I’ve been tricked by the devil,” said Devine, owner of Harrodsburg-based Devine Creations Landscaping. “I feel so stupid.”

Devine says he lost a $100,000 account because he didn’t have enough men to do the job. He’s worried he may be out of business next year if things don’t improve.

He isn’t alone. Cuts in H-2B visas are hurting small businesses across the country that can’t find Americans willing to do hard, manual labor: Maryland crab processors, Texas shrimp fishermen, and Kentucky landscapers and construction companies.

… “We live and die by these visas,” said Ken Monin, owner of Monin Construction, which specializes in home additions, roofs, decks and garages. “Last year we about went bankrupt. The workers we were supposed to get in March didn’t show up until August because they couldn’t get visas.”

Monin applied for eight H-2B workers this year, but he isn’t optimistic he will get any. Employers seeking H-2B workers must prove they have advertised and tried unsuccessfully to hire local workers.

“Americans don’t want most of these jobs,” said Monin, who pays his workers about $17 an hour. “I’ve been in this business 20 years. It’s hard, hot work.”

Historians may look back on this week as a turning point in the evolution of the internet.

First came the end of net neutrality rules, which were officially taken off the books on Monday. These rules of the road ensured that broadband and wireless providers couldn’t act as gatekeepers picking and choosing who succeeds on the internet and who doesn’t.

That’s just the start of what’s expected to be a cascade of deals between broadband and media companies, both of which are anxious that they aren’t powerful enough to compete against the likes of Facebook and Google. While consumer advocates have long feared this scenario of greater consolidation, they’re downright apoplectic that it’s happening without any restrictions to protect people and innovators.

“Merging AT&T, one of the largest cable, satellite and mobile broadband companies, with Time Warner will lead to higher prices, fewer choices and perhaps more importantly, fewer voices,” Gigi Sohn, an adviser to former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said. “Coupled with the demise of the 2015 net neutrality rules, AT&T will be free to favor Time Warner content over its cable and its fixed and mobile broadband networks.” …

… What exactly happened this week? On Tuesday, a federal judge ruled that the government had failed to prove that AT&T’s proposed $85 billion merger with Time Warner would harm consumers, paving the way for AT&T to complete the acquisition. The US Department of Justice had argued that the mega-merger would create unfair competition for other TV providers, which might need to pay more for access to AT&T’s content. But Judge Richard Leon disagreed.

He sided with AT&T, which argued that it needs Time Warner’s content to compete against online video rivals, such as Netflix, Facebook and Google.

… How is net neutrality related to the AT&T-Time Warner merger? AT&T already owns one of the largest broadband networks in the US and is the second largest wireless provider in the nation by subscribers. Now with the Time Warner deal, it also gets popular media properties such as DC Entertainment and HBO.

Net neutrality supporters fear AT&T will use its tight control of this content to discriminate against competitors.

“Without net neutrality protections in place, AT&T will be free to block, slow down, or charge fees to competitors like Netflix and Hulu to favor their own DirecTV Now streaming service and HBO content,” Sen. Ed Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts and a staunch defender of net neutrality, said following the judge’s decision.

A big danger: so-called zero-rating plans, in which AT&T exempts certain content on its network from data caps. For instance, the company already allows unlimited streaming of its DirecTV Now service to AT&T wireless customers without having those streams count against a monthly data cap. Meanwhile, services like Netflix still count against a data limit.

Now that the deal has closed, AT&T could expand zero-rating to other Time Warner-owned streaming services, like HBO Now, while still excluding streaming services from other companies. …

… Did the 2015 net neutrality rules prevent this kind of behavior? The former net neutrality rules specifically banned broadband and wireless providers from slowing or blocking access to certain sites. And it also banned paid prioritization or allowing network operators to charge companies, like Netflix, to deliver their services to customers. But the rules didn’t specifically ban zero rating. Instead, the regulation included a so-called general conduct rule that allowed the FCC to look at suspected anticompetitive behavior on a case-by-case basis.

I thought the Federal Trade Commission was going to police the internet. Why can’t antitrust law handle these issues? The FTC can file lawsuits against companies for anticompetitive or deceptive practices. And the antitrust division of the DOJ can also bring cases against companies. But some experts like Hal Singer, an economist and adjunct professor at Georgetown University, say that antitrust cases are hard to prove when a company is vertically integrated.

… So it sounds like we’re pretty much screwed. Right? … There are efforts to preserve the 2015 net neutrality rules. Senate Democrats, with the help of a few Republicans, passed a resolution to use the Congressional Review Act to throw out the order dismantling the 2015 rules. It still needs to pass the House and get the signature of President Trump, which is unlikely. And states like New York and California are considering legislation to make net neutrality law in their states.

Monday, June 11, is the first day of the post-net neutrality internet. In December, the Federal Communications Commission voted to repeal the Obama-era rules that prohibit internet companies from slowing down or speeding up access to certain websites, but it took about six months for the repeal to get a sign-off from the Office of Management and Budget and for the new rules to be published in the federal register. Beginning, well, now, your internet access could—emphasis on could—feel dramatically different than it did yesterday. …

… The FCC’s move to rescind the Obama-era open internet protections, however, is facing serious challenges, both from multiple lawsuits expected to be filed in the coming days against the repeal as well as from Congress, where Democratic lawmakers have led an effort to undo the FCC’s actions. In May, every Senate Democrat and three Republicans—Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, John Kennedy of Louisiana, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska— voted to reverse the net neutrality repeal with a Congressional Review Act resolution, which is used to overturn or eliminate a federal agency’s action. Congressional Republicans have used the same process to reverse more than a dozen regulatory actions since Donald Trump won the election in 2016—but those were rules passed under President Obama. In order for the resolution to go into effect, a simple majority in the House also has to vote to undo the repeal, and President Trump has to sign it. But in the House, Republicans outnumber Democrats 235-193, meaning more than 20 Republicans would have to get on board if every Democrat voted in favor. …

Last week was a particularly rough one for journalists and truth-seeking citizens.

President Trump declared the news media the nation’s worst enemy. And time after shocking time, his acolytes demeaned or threatened reporters for doing one of their most basic jobs: asking questions of those in power.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told a reporter in North Korea that it was “insulting and ridiculous and ludicrous” for him to be asked about details of the verification process for the vaunted denuclearization.

Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale suggested taking a CNN reporter’s credentials away after he shouted a question at the president.

It was ugly. Even uglier than usual.

… Enter George Lakoff. An author, cognitive scientist and linguist who has long studied how propaganda works, he believes it’s long past time for the reality-based news media to stop kowtowing to the emperor.

“Trump needs the media, and the media help him by repeating what he says,” Lakoff said.

That would be okay under normal circumstances, he told me, but “this situation is not normal — you have a sustained attack on the democracy and the news media.”

Unlike those who insist that what the president says is news and therefore must be reported, Lakoff proposes a radical reimagining of how the news media reports on Trump.

Instead of treating the president’s every tweet and utterance — true or false — as newsworthy (and then perhaps fact-checking it later), Lakoff urges the use of what he calls a “truth sandwich.”

First, he says, get as close to the overall, big-picture truth as possible right away. (Thus the gist of the Trump-in-Singapore story: Little of substance was accomplished in the summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, despite the pageantry.) Then report what Trump is claiming about it: achievement of world peace. And then, in the same story or broadcast, fact-check his claims.

Avoid retelling the lies. Avoid putting them in headlines, leads or tweets, he says. Because it is that very amplification that gives them power.

That’s how propaganda works on the brain: through repetition, even when part of that repetition is fact-checking. …

… Jay Rosen of New York University sums up one such proposal in three words: “Send the interns.” White House briefings, since the very beginning of Sean Spicer’s efforts to defend the indefensible about the size of Trump’s inauguration crowd, are no place for talented, highly compensated reporters to spend their time and energy. They have also become a place that lacks not just candor but also civility, as Sarah Huckabee Sanders showed last week when she refused to answer reasonable questions, repeated lies about Trump’s immigration policy [of] tearing children from their parents, and then took a nasty swipe at CNN’s Jim Acosta: “I know it’s hard for you to understand even short sentences.”

So, Rosen says, go ahead and continue to staff these briefings. But send the interns. …

… Lakoff said he sees very few examples of doing what he suggests, even though news organizations have become more willing to forthrightly say that a Trump utterance is a lie, and more likely to include plenty of context in news reporting.

When Eritrea gained independence in 1993, Ethiopia suddenly found itself without a coastline and so it took the logical step of disbanding its navy. Now, it is reconsidering its decision and its latest manoeuvres in the region suggest it could be shopping around its neighbourhood to find a naval base it can use. …

What is behind the move?: State-linked Fana Broadcasting Corporate quoted Mr Abiy as saying the military reforms should “take into account current fast changing world, socio-economic and political situation in Ethiopia”. …

After Ethiopia and Eritrea fought a bitter border war from 1998-2000, [it lost access to Eritrea’s Red Sea] ports …. So it had to find alternatives.

Ethiopia recently signed a deal to take a stake in the port of Djibouti, which now handles roughly 95% of all its exports and imports.

It is also connected to its small neighbour by a new 472 mile (759 km) railway line – opened last year – which links the capital Addis Ababa to the port of Doraleh, an extension of the port of Djibouti.

The railway line has increased the movement of cargo volumes to and from the port to such an extent that at least 70% of all its activity is now Ethiopian trade.

Roba Megerssa Akawak, head of the state-owned Ethiopian Shipping & Logistics Services Enterprise (ESLSE), told Bloomberg that Ethiopia was concerned that Djibouti was controlled by foreign naval forces. US, China, Japan and France all have military bases there. “We are afraid perhaps in the future that even Djibouti may not have its own say to really decide on its own fate. This is quite a threat to Ethiopia.”

… Former Ethiopian diplomat Birhanemeskel Abebe speculates that strategic and geo-political security concerns could be driving the navy plan.

“Ethiopia’s right to use international waters demands it has a naval base,” he told the BBC’s Newsday programme.

He suggested Kenya, Somaliland and Djibouti as possible locations for the base.

The plan, Mr Birhanemeskel said, was to push for the “unification of the Horn of Africa as an economic bloc and the navy is part of that project”.

… Is a navy feasible?: Timothy Walker, a maritime researcher at ISS, however cautioned that it would take decades for Ethiopia to have a fully fledged naval unit.

“It may create a maritime branch of its armed forces but not a navy… it would take decades for the procurement of ships and training of the force. … Many African countries do not have a sufficient navy and if you look at the Horn of Africa, the big world powers are the ones who operate there,” Mr Walker said.

According to several of its satellite passengers, SpaceX’s second launch of Falcon Heavy – this time with three Falcon 9 Block 5 boosters – is understood to be targeted for no earlier than November 2018 and will mark the first commercial mission for the world’s most powerful operational rocket.

Under the blanket label Space Test Program-2 (STP-2), Falcon Heavy’s first operational mission will be conducted for the US Air Force and see 25 various spacecraft – some weighing as much as 500 kilograms – launched into an equally varied selection of orbits, requiring a complex series of restarts and burns for the rocket’s upgraded Block 5 second stage. STP-2 also includes a huge 5000-kilogram ballast mass as a result of the decision to fly the mission as a demonstration of Falcon Heavy instead of a less powerful but cheaper and simpler single-booster Falcon 9. The total mass of all 25 payloads is likely far beneath the powerful rocket’s actual capabilities, as are the performance and propellant reserves required for the upper stage to inject different spacecraft into a number of orbits, hence the inclusion of so much dead mass. …

Scientists have created human-sheep hybrids in a step toward human organ production in animals.

The approach could one day supply organs for transplantation in humans and even offer a cure for Type 1 diabetes.

Researchers Hiro Nakauchi from Stanford University and Pablo Ross from the University of California spoke at the annual American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting in Austin, Texas, on Sunday.

Approximately 115,000 people need a lifesaving organ transplant in the U.S, and every 10 minutes a new patient is added to the national waiting list.

The demand for organs far outstrips supply in the U.S., as 20 people die every day waiting for a transplant.

Since Jan. 20, 2017, European leaders have managed U.S. relations with one eye on the clock, anxiously counting down the hours until President Trump’s term is up and hoping the core of the Western alliance isn’t too badly damaged in the meantime.

But as Trump’s aggressive rhetoric toward America’s closest allies has evolved into hostile action this spring, a new fear has swept European capitals.

Trump may not be an aberration that can be waited out, with his successor likely to push reset after four or eight years of fraught ties. Instead, the blend of unilateralism, nationalism and protectionism Trump embodies may be the new American normal.

“It is dawning on a number of European players that Trump may not be an outlier,” said Josef Janning, head of the Berlin office of the European Council on Foreign Relations. “More and more people are seeing it as a larger change in the United States.” …

A lot has changed since 2013, when the editors of The Onion got an angry email from Donald Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen. Back then, Cohen was an executive vice president at the Trump Organization, and his client was just a TV mogul, still years away from announcing his first serious presidential bid.

Cohen was fuming over a satirical article published under Trump’s name with the headline, “When You’re Feeling Low, Just Remember I’ll Be Dead In About 15 Or 20 Years.” On Trump’s behalf, Cohen demanded that The Onion immediately remove the article and apologize.

“This commentary goes way beyond defamation and, if not immediately removed, I will take all actions necessary to ensure your actions do not go without consequence,” Cohen wrote, according to a copy of the email provided to POLITICO. “Guide yourself accordingly.”

Five years later, Trump is in the White House, Cohen is under federal investigation and the article is still on The Onion’s website, which many West Wing staffers begrudgingly admit to occasionally reading.

… As The Onion tries to find its footing in the Trump era, its writers have increasingly focused on the people around the president. Vice President Mike Pence is often depicted as a repressed religious fanatic who, in one memorable article, refused to be alone with a bottle of Mrs. Butterworth maple syrup until his wife arrived. Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., known as the “Trump boys” in The Onion’s lexicon, are cast as bumbling simpletons whose misadventures — from setting up their own makeshift law firm in the White House’s electrical room to interrupting an intelligence briefing with sofa cushions duct-taped to their bodies — are the closest thing to the site’s wildly successful mockery of former Vice President Joe Biden. …

“… Trump poses definitely an interesting challenge [says editor-in-chief Chad Nackers], and it goes pretty deep. We’re so divided in this country politically right now that I feel like people can be very dismissive if they think you’re doing a joke that’s critical of Trump. They’ll be like, “That’s not funny. That’s no good.” On the other hand, I think overly left-leaning people can be too on board with anything someone says, not even an Onion thing. They’ll believe anything as long as it’s hammering Trump. …

… The First Amendment is very important to all journalists, and that’s something I’ve always been appreciative of with The Onion, that in America you feel very protected and you can comment on things. So, it scares me when, regardless of the political group, when people start saying, “Well, that person shouldn’t be allowed to say anything.” Because that’s a pretty slippery slope. …

… The other challenge about this administration is that so many of their policies and things, like for the EPA, they almost feel like satire. You’re just cutting everything that would protect the environment or making it easier for people to pollute. That’s the kind of thing that you would in the past make jokes about. I think we had an article years ago that said something like: “EPA: Rivers Aren’t Supposed to Smell like Shit.” And you can’t really do that kind of joke now because that’s not really where their focus is.

It goes throughout the Department of Interior. We used to do lots of jokes about various things — laying off animals and stuff like that. It’s not quite as relevant now because they’re not functioning at a normal level.

The extreme weather swings that Californians have experienced over the past six years — a historic drought followed by drenching winter storms that caused $100 million in damage to San Jose and wrecked the spillway at Oroville Dam — will become the norm over the coming generations, a new study has found.

Those types of extremes are not new, but because of climate change, they can be expected to occur more frequently, as hotter global temperatures and warming oceans are putting more water vapor into the air, concluded the study, which was published Monday in the scientific journal Nature Climate Change.

And perhaps most ominous, the odds are rising that a mega-storm — like the one that famously flooded California in 1862, forcing Leland Stanford to take a rowboat through the streets of Sacramento to his inauguration as governor — will strike again. Such a storm “is more likely than not” to hit the state at least once in the next 40 years and twice in the next 80, the study found. The 1862 event, the largest recorded flood in California history, saw 43 days of continuous rainfall that washed whole towns away and forced the state capital to be temporarily moved to San Francisco.

Apply anti-nepotism law to White House (It was WRITTEN for White House [Robert Kennedy serving with JFK])

All declared POTUS candidates must release at least 5 years tax returns and medical physical data. (LEGISLATE/AMENDMENT: for how many years)

Presidents may not self-pardon (AMENDMENT OR LEGISLATION: or pardon executive appointees?)

No “self-funding” of campaigns beyond legal donor limit.

Special counsel has power to indict president

ADD:

2/3 Senate vote to confirm SCOTUS appointment

TOPICS FROM PREVIOUS WEEKS:

TV Talk:

“The Good Place”

“The Orville”

“Adam Ruins Everything”

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About Thinkwing Radio

Mike Honig is originally from Brooklyn, New York. He moved to Houston in September of 1977 and has been there ever since. Mike's interests are politics, history, science, science fiction (and reading generally), technology, and almost anything else. Mike has knowledge and experience in many diverse fields, sometimes from having worked in them, and sometimes from extensive reading or discussion about them. Mike's general knowledge makes him a favorite partner in Trivial Pursuit. He likes to say that about most things, he knows enough to be dangerous. Humility is a work-in-progress.